(12/5/2005) Some well respected intellectuals believe that the Republican Party has been taken over by the Religious Right through the Christian Coalition and other Christian and Jewish fundamentalist organizations, but I believe the opposite is true. The evidence indicates that President Bush and the Republicans in Congress are using the voting power of conservative Christians and Jews to maintain their positions of power in our government so they can help a few of their rich friends get a lot richer.

They are doing this by claiming they are conservative Christians, and by representing the interest of Christians on some issues that are important to Christian's religious beliefs. However, when you look at the bigger picture, and compare their rhetoric to the results that their legislation produces, you quickly see a Republican Party that has moral and ethical values that are the opposite of Christian values, and are not at all conservative.

The Republican Party supports issues like outlawing a woman's right to abortion, non-secular prayers in public schools, and  teaching creationism along side science. They also try to promote the belief that they are Christians by using the word "God" in their speeches, attending church services, and telling the public they are Christians.

Just because someone goes to church, says they are a Christian, and talks about the teachings of Jesus does not make them a Christian or a moral person. You can tell a Christian by their actions, not by their words or by how many times they attend church services.

If the Republican Party had been taken over by Christian organizations why would they wait until the middle of the night to debate and pass legislation that cuts funding for veterans, education, health care, Head Start, Medicare, and give huge tax cut that go almost exclusively to millionaires? This contradiction exposes a fraud being perpetrated on people of Christian faith by some leaders of the Religious Right and the Republicans in Congress.

A true Christian has values that include charity, generosity, modesty, honesty, moderation, humility, meekness, chastity, temperance, kindness, forgiveness, enthusiasm, understanding, sharing, human rights, compromise, prudence, lawfulness, compassion, and helpfulness. President Bush and the Republicans in Congress pay lip service to these values but have policies that generate results that can best be described with the following un-Christian values: greed, lying, wrath, corruption, cronyism, gluttony, vanity, violence, killing, torture, self-serving, disgust, blame, war, and fraud.      

President Bush and the Republicans in Congress are proclaiming their Christian faiths in an attempt to deceive the American people into believe things that are not true about their morality and political ideology, and it appears to be working. A recent poll showed that 36% of Americans think that President Bush is doing a good job, and when ask why they responded: they like his policies and his Christian values. Clearly these people are responding to the GOP's spin and are ignoring the facts.

The reality is that the Republicans in Congress, President Bush, and a few right-wing media personalities are colluding and conspiring with a few mega wealthy families to rob our government and undermine our democracy. They are just conning the American people with a false Christian morality based on a few divisive issues so they can rob the federal government of trillions of dollars in assets. Obviously these are not goals that Jesus would condone, and they are certainly not based on a conservative political ideology or biblical teachings. In fact, what they are doing is unconstitutional, immoral, unethical, and criminal.

This small right-wing group of people are creating an un-Godly fascist plutocracy in America, and they are doing so using Straussian-Machiavellian methods; one of which is using the government's leaders to promoting strong religious ideals to motivate, control, and mislead the general public.

The evidence of this reality is in the details of their actions and legislation. For example, Bush tells lies even in the face of the facts. He promotes and passes legislation that is helpful to the very rich but is very costly to everyone else. He started a totally unnecessary war in Iraq based on a lie and this war has been very costly, both in dollars and in lives, and it has been carried out using torture, collective punishments, chemical weapons, the killing of tens of thousands of non-combatant Iraqi citizens, and a string of lies about the progress we are making. He is a huge advocate for the death penalty despite that the fact that many innocent people have been put on death row, and at least one innocent person has been put to death. He supports tort reforms that limit jury's powers and prevents corporate accountability. He has shifted the tax burden onto the middle class. He refuses to increase the poverty level minimum wage. He, and the Republican controlled Congress have swung the budget projections $10 trillion dollars in the wrong direction. The Republicans in Congress are currently trying to cut school lunch school programs, cut college tuition assistance, cut funding for veterans, and cut food stamps for the poor, and at the same time pass more tax cuts for people who make over one million dollars a year. They even call their latest budget document "The Deficit Reduction Act", even though it adds an additional $33 billion dollars to the already huge budget deficits.

These actions and results expose values that no one would honestly call Christian values. They do expose the GOP's ability to commit one fraud and rip-off after another while lying about what they are doing and why they are doing it. And I could go on and on with more examples and better details but these few examples expose the fact that the GOP has values that are the opposite of Christian values.

Jesus did not preach, and the bible does not teach, immoral and unethical values. I seriously doubt that any intelligent and informed Christian, whether a fundamentalist or a moderate, would agree that Christian values and the GOP's values are in sync. Christians who think they are in sync with the GOP are either ill-informed, hypocrites, bigots, or fools.

I hate to be so blunt but I don't know a more sincere way to state the obvious truth. I have a bad habit of offending people with my politically incorrect statements, but the truth can be like a slap in the face, and especially for people who have some history or vested interest in a previous position.

I know the leaders of the Religious Right are not stupid people, and they are cutting their deals with the GOP just like any other special interest faction. However, if their deals on smaller issues are blinding them to the bigger picture their small victories are going to be muted and negated by huge losses in the end. They need someone like me to point that out so they have more leverage in their deal cutting negotiations.

Also, many leaders of the Christian Right, like Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, James Dobson, Alan Keyes, and others appear to very closely connected to the Republican Party. For example, Ralph Reed, who was the former head of the Christian Coalition, started a political consulting and lobbying firm, Century Strategies, who's clients have included Enron, thanks to some help from Karl Rove, as well as many Republican candidates. Reed is currently under investigation for his key role in the Jack Abramoff bribe scandal.

It appears that Christians are being used and manipulated by a small number of well financed corrupt Religious leaders who are really just demagogues and are part of a right-wing criminal conspiracy to help corrupt Republicans win elections and enrich themselves while our government is being robbed of $100 trillion dollars in assets. It is a classic bait and switch con job.

Christians are getting suckered into this con because they don't know any better. They are too busy at work, on the road, watching the kids, watching reality TV, eating snacks, drinking alcohol, having sex, and sleeping to engage in critical thinking research. Also, they want to believe these right-wing religious leaders are honest and moral people but they are being fooled with clever sophism and demagoguery, and not just from these few well known religious leaders but also from some corrupt media personalities and immoral politicians. The end result is that you could hit most of these people in the face with a 2 by 4 of the truth and they would pick themselves up and keep right on going as if nothing happened. They have been conned, brainwashed, and almost hypnotized by these very successful right-wing hypocrites.

Many followers of the Religious Right have been deceived and are allowing others to do their thinking for them. These people pick up on a few sound bites, mantras, slogans, and spin and then their thinking has already been done, and their decisions are easily predictable. They vote for Republicans because they believe the spin that the Republican Party represents Christian values when the opposite is true.

Some people argue that the GOP's Christian values are sincere based on the Christian Calvinist view of "the divine right of kings", and therefore Bush's policies that promote inequality are justified. In other words, God chose to make George W. Bush president and therefore whatever Bush decides to do is God's will and as Christians we should accept it without question. In other words, we should just have some faith in President Bush and forget the facts.

This Calvinist reasoning does explain away a lot of apparent un-Jesus like actions by the Bush administration and the GOP. However, if the term "Christianity" can be used to justify actions from one end of the moral and ethical spectrum to the other end does the term really mean anything at all, or is it just used like Thomas Paine suggested in the following statement (paraphrased) "....(Christianity is) no other than (a) human invention (s) set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit."?

President Bush and the Republicans in Congress might be sincere in their nebulous Christian beliefs as it relates to social inequality, but social inequality is only one aspect of the GOP's immoral and unethical actions during the past few years. What about all the lying, stealing, killing, and bribery? Sorry, but the Calvinist excuse is probably just an excuse to justify criminal behavior by people who claim to be Christians.

I strongly suspect and greatly fear that these Republican politicians, who like to wear their Christian faith on their selves just like Bush does, are frauds. They are only using Christianity to deceive us while actually enriching themselves and their mega wealthy contributors. They worship gold and power, period. There are also a number of Democrats who appear to be flawed in the same way, including Senator Joe Lieberman who is Jewish.

Personally, I grew up in a Catholic family that regularly attended church services and Sunday school, however, I now consider myself a Deist. As a Deist I believe in God but I look to science, reason, logic, knowledge, and personal experience to find meaning, answers, and my purpose in God's universe rather than scripture or prophets. As a Deist I support capitalism, democracy, and freedom, and I even like many conservative ideals, however, I agree with Kenneth Galbraith when he said "Economic justice can be measure by the screams of anguish from the very rich". And with President Roosevelt when he said "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad for morals; we now know that it is bad for economics." and "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.". Even President Lincoln, a Republican, warned us about the danger to our democracy from the concentration of wealth into the hands of a few.

Voters shouldn't believe what Bush and the Republicans in Congress say because they lie a lot, but rather believe what your mind tells you is the truth by studying their actions through the results that their legislation produces. In the past five years their legislation has produced huge deficits and debt, death, destruction, corruption, cronyism, a bigger wealth gap, a looted Social Security trust fund, a bankrupting Medicare prescription drug plan, corporate scandals, and fear, just to name a few. They are counting on our busy life styles, limited attention spans, forgetful memories, fears, and insecurities to keep us fooled with their constant phony spin on the facts while we sheepishly follow them to our demise, and as we watch helplessly as our government is robbed and our democracy is undermined.  

Once you realize the truth about President Bush and the Republicans in Congress -- that they are nothing more than corrupt fascist puppet whores working for a few inheritance rich sociopaths who are robbing the government and undermining our democracy -- you should make the decision to start fighting back. We cannot allow them to get away with their treasonous actions and plans. Their immoral and unethical words and actions are a slap in the face of every Christian and every American. In Robert F. Kennedy's words "If we do not attack organized crime with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us.".

I recommend we start fighting back today by badgering, boycotting, and using civil disobedience to get the GOP out of power, and if these methods don't work we should increase our actions until they all run away from our government fearing for their own lives. Otherwise, you may find yourself living in a cardboard box under a bridge without the ability to change anything. And if that happens your Christian values won't buy you a drink of water without first receiving a lesson in Christian values from one of Bush's new un-constitutional, government sponsored, and privately run faith based programs. It appears Bush's Christian values could become a catch-22 for real Christians, and everyone else.